That's one thing -- Mary Sue is a sufficiently pejorative term that it's not helpful anywhere near a writer, fan or original. No one thinks their current work is Sueish*. And, given the vagaries of taking the definition of a Mary Sue and stretching it to include original works in a new universe, it's not that helpful outside of fanfiction without some attempt to pin down what an original universe Mary Sue would look like.
(My big definition tends to be 'the universe warps such that she is the center of it'. That's harder to quantify in original fiction, save to say something like 'everything but the protagonist feels like cardboard cutouts and the protagonist's paper dolls, such that if I try to imagine the universe outside the protagonist's head, I see a lot of flats, edges and unpainted back sides'.)
* Well, mostly. A friend of mine from high school admits her story journal was full of Mary Sue crossover fanfiction. But, since I was maybe one of a handful people who has read her work extensively since it stays in her notebooks, her original characters don't have the 'readers will love her like I do' aura.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-10-11 09:27 pm (UTC)(My big definition tends to be 'the universe warps such that she is the center of it'. That's harder to quantify in original fiction, save to say something like 'everything but the protagonist feels like cardboard cutouts and the protagonist's paper dolls, such that if I try to imagine the universe outside the protagonist's head, I see a lot of flats, edges and unpainted back sides'.)
* Well, mostly. A friend of mine from high school admits her story journal was full of Mary Sue crossover fanfiction. But, since I was maybe one of a handful people who has read her work extensively since it stays in her notebooks, her original characters don't have the 'readers will love her like I do' aura.